Merry Christmas

Julia's first grade teacher asked us if we could come play some Christmas music for her class today. We decided to get everybody involved so we had Audrey bring her cello and brought a couple of "drums" for Natalie. We taught the kids about the different instruments of the orchestra and then each of us demonstrated our individual instruments. We then played "Joy to the World" as the encore. Right before dinner tonight, we decided to get our little encore on tape. We ran through it once and decided that it was too slow so we taped it one more time and got the following video. I'm not sure how Natalie knew that it was right time to give us drum hit but she really nailed it.
Merry Christmas everybody!

Audrey's First Cello Recital

Audrey had her first cello recital a few weeks ago and she was clearly the best girl in her row. She's been working hard to learn how to hold the cello and the bow. She did a nice job at her recital and we're looking forward to many more good things from Audrey.

Natalie's 1st Birthday

Natalie had her first birthday last month and we had a little party with Grandma and Grandpa Jay and Careen who were here for Thanksgiving. We love our little Natalie but it's always a relief to make it to the first birthday. I almost feel like parents should get the presents on their children's first birthdays for keeping them alive. In any case, Natalie had a good day and she seemed to enjoy her first birthday cake.

two fairies, a good witch, and Cleopatra

On Halloween, the girls spent the better part of the afternoon decorating our yard for Halloween. We already had some spooky ghouls, spider webs, and pumpkins out, but they wanted more and they did it for the most part all on their own. Julia added a sign post with directions to the "White ghost yard", the "skull yard", the "vampire yard" and other scary places. Perhaps the best one though was the poor scooter flung haphazardly on its side, buried with leaves. The girls are standing in front of a sign that tells of the "Legend of the bad crash of the scooter: 200 years ago thear was a famos scoter rider that was riding a scoter in a grave yard then a ghost showd up and made a huge crash hapen then the famos scoter rider was killed." R.I.P. scooter rider.

October

We took our annual trip to the farm for a hay ride and pumpkin picking and we had an especially good time this year. During the pig races, Julia got picked out of a large crowd to be the representative for our section of seats, which was the "Yellow Team." There were four sections and four corresponding pigs and Julia's little pig won the race! The prize was a pig nose, which she wore proudly. She was a very excited little girl to be chosen out of such a large crowd.
Our girls are starting to become good friends. (When they're not fighting) The other night, the girls were fighting over who got to sit next to Natalie so they compromised and both sat close to her. They kept trying to get Natalie to make her famous scrunched up "face" and, as you can see, they were successful. We have some funny little girls.

Kamikaze Barbie

Our ward had a pinewood derby race the other night. The normal height and weight restrictions were lifted for this activity because they wanted to encourage creative entries. So, for family home evening last week, we all got pieces of paper and sketched several different ideas. There were some very interesting ideas for different cars including a toilet car as well as several different kinds of food cars. However, the winning design was the barbie car in the pictures. She wasn't very fast but then again she wasn't really built for speed. The winning car was a block of wood straight out of the box with some rocks taped to it. The "builder" of that car said that he used "Physics and stuff" in the construction process. Even though we didn't win the race, we had a good time.

"Doctor"

Audrey and Julia spent a couple of very happy hours yesterday playing doctor. This morning while cleaning, we found the following record of their adventure:

Patient's Name__________________Anistasia
Skin____________________________White
Phone Number____________________540-67
Fatness_________________________413
Last Name_______________________Herbert
Password________________________StateRoomor
Eye Color_______________________Blue
Doctor__________________________Dr. Dawn
Tongue Hole_____________________1/1
Age_____________________________4
Eye Stuff_______________________Blind
Teeth___________________________20
Code____________________________XOXOXOA
Hair Color______________________Blonde
Chest Growth____________________None
Scout___________________________White Dots
Nails___________________________Long
Middle Name_____________________Min

So, aside from blindness and the lack of chest growth, our patients seem to be healthy.